


Old Sins And New

by dagonst



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-10
Updated: 2017-12-10
Packaged: 2019-02-13 05:55:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,267
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12977493
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dagonst/pseuds/dagonst
Summary: Sandor Clegane had expected no welcome at Winterfell.  Or, the reunion of two people who probably would have been happier not to meet again.





	Old Sins And New

Sandor wakes to a woman’s strangled scream, drawn breath meaning more noise to follow. He heaves to his feet, ignoring the leg, to stop it before she brings the whole keep down on him. She swings her torch, the light dimming and dancing. He catches that arm and she hits him with something hard in the other. But that’s no use, he’s got her - back against the iron grate, a hand on the torch to keep her from dropping it into the straw. The woman goes still and shaking. 

Then he sees what he’s caught: Sansa Stark. Seven hells.

He keeps the torch, drops his hand from her mouth. Then has to catch her, so she doesn’t slide right down. “I thought little birds slept in the night,” he barks. “What are you about?” 

She collects herself between one breath and the next. Stops staring like he’s an old nightmare come back to life. “Gods, you’re alive.” She laughs, short, without smiling. “Sandor Clegane. But what are you doing here?” 

“Came in with your brother,” he says, his wits catching up to his tongue. Winterfell, and he’d expected no welcome there. Hadn’t meant to seek out trouble on top of what he’d already made for himself. 

“Jon,” the little bird repeats, like she has brothers to choose from. “Of course. But here?” She says it as though he’d stumbled into her bedchamber. Again. “It’s the kennels. We’re tearing them down.”

“Fit enough for a dog, then. Your brother got me out of a cell, at the Wall.”

“Jon has done a good many things. I hope we may hear more of them, now he is returned. Winterfell is not King’s Landing,” she says, proud as any lord. “Nor the Wall. You should have had a room.”

Maybe they had given him a room in the night, or tried. He’d been staggering blind by the end, had taken the first place out of the wind. Dangerous in the north, in winter. He still doesn’t know why she’s here. “Are you starting in the dead of night? What’s wrong with this place?” He’s spent nights in buildings that might fall down any minute. This isn’t one. 

Sansa looks at him hard, then only frowns. “It’s nearly morning. Our days are short.” She steps to the side, kneeling for the bucket she’d tried hitting him with. “Bring the torch, please.” 

She says her courtesies like a lord, too. In King’s Landing, Sansa Stark was always _sorry_. Not enough to spare herself a beating. Nor enough for Joffrey to tire of it the way he had. The girl was taught that ‘sorry’ with her pleases and thank-yous and sers, and her gods-damned stories and songs. The woman’s learned, sometime since, not to sound like she’s asking at all.

He follows, and sees now what he hadn’t in the night. Winterfell’s kennels are empty, all the floors bare stone. Only the last has straw, and a bitch curled around her pups. Sansa pours out the bucket in the next cell, locks that again. She opens the two cells to each other and the dog heaves herself up to eat, allows the grate to be lowered behind her.

Sansa opens the last cell and picks one of the pups, waking it. Stands with it, and touches its paws, its face - 

“Give one here,” Sandor says, fitting the burning torch in a sconce, ducking into the kennel. Sansa’s training the dogs to accept a human touch, so they can be trained later, hounds for the hunt. “Was it sickness?”

“It was Ramsay,” she says. Sansa Stark had raised her brother’s army and another from the Vale against her husband. Had taken Winterfell and her old name in battle. Not his place to ask, or to know. But it’s not likely she did all that over hunting dogs, or lack of courtesy to unwelcome guests. 

The pups are gladder than either of them to be waked in the dark, happy enough to be handled. The one he’s got doesn’t flinch at being held high, gums at his finger, its teeth just starting. “Don’t let it do that,” Sansa says. “I don’t want them to get the taste for it.”

The great lords keep men to hunt men, and their hounds hunt game. But if you can train a dog to fight a bear, you can train it to attack a man. “Did you kill Bolton’s dogs for that, their training?” Of course she did. A girl’s squeamishness about ugly truths, with a lord’s privilege. The bitch only spared for breeding, until the litter is weaned.

Sansa sets down her pup. “Ramsay trained them to kill. Before the battle, he starved them. He thought they would lie at his feet and keep starving.”

Sandor grins, more from understanding than humor. Small wonder no-one was sleeping here already. “You should have kept them, little bird. You’ll have more husbands that need killing.”

She doesn’t smile, does look at him again. “My last suitor was just now executed. My sister Arya cut his throat in our Great Hall. We have learned.” 

For a horrible instant, Sandor thinks she means the Imp, that she’s gone and killed the Dragon Queen’s Hand, and he’ll have to get the both of them out of Winterfell before the Targaryen finds out.

Then he remembers there was a suitor, Brienne of Tarth had spent the voyage petitioning Jon Snow to pack him off. “Just keep to killing men who won’t be missed, will you?”

“I thank you for your good counsel,” Sansa says formally. She busies herself choosing another from the litter. “There’s nothing wrong in their breeding, that I know.”

“No,” Sandor agrees. “No wolf in them.” In the south, that was something to be watched for, guarded against. A flaw in the bloodline. While the Stark children brought direwolves to their table. Sansa pretends not to have heard, bending her head to her work.

The bitch finishes her meal, paces and whines to be let in to her pups, or for them to cross to her. Sansa pulls herself up to go. “The kitchens will be up now, if you want food.”

Then she turns back, at the edge of the torchlight. “Ramsay used to keep men here too. Men he broke. You can sleep on the ramparts for all I care, but you will have a proper room.”

It’s not much to him. And nothing to do with him, either. It grates, like the rest of her courtesies. “Do you want thanks, Lady Stark?”

“Your thanks, my lord? I want peace. And spring, and lemon cakes, and more hours each day. Why waste a marvel?”

Seven hells, she sounds like Arya. Then she sighs, and the next thing she says _will_ be ‘sorry’, if he doesn’t find some answer. 

“My grandfather was kennelmaster for the Lannisters.” Likely the girl knows the story already, it’s on the Clegane coat of arms. “I can deal with these. That’s one hour for you.”

“Oh,” Sansa says, and then, “Gods, yes. _Thank_ you.” She’d sounded less grateful when he saved her from the mob. When he gave her back to the Lannisters, one mistake of many. She starts to turn and fly, then stops short at the door, skirts swirling. “Arya. Have you given her reason to want you dead?”

He can only shrug. “She didn’t kill me when I asked.”

Sansa makes a face. “Don’t ask again. I’ll see to that. And the room. Welcome to Winterfell, Sandor Clegane.” And then she’s flown off, and there’s no sign of sunrise for another hour.

**Author's Note:**

> I started writing this to address one of this season’s big questions: whatever happened to Ramsay’s dogs? And, what would the Hound make of Lady Sansa Stark? The answer to both being, probably nothing good. Thanks for reading!


End file.
